The latest telemetry from the frontiers of science...
Browse our most recent analyses and observations — from orbital mechanics to propulsion systems, we cover the successes, the failures, and all the moments that make you pause and think, “Sure… but why?”
Posted on 13th Jun 2025
There’s been talk over the last few years about a lunar base called the ILRS (or the International Lunar Research Station). It would be built near the south pole of the Moon, with additional outposts near the lunar equator and a space station orbiting overhead. The idea is that the whole thing wou...
Posted on 13th Jun 2025
Titan is an interesting place. It's the largest moon of Saturn, bigger than our Moon and bigger even than the planet Mercury. It's also the only place besides Earth in the solar system with a dense atmosphere and standing bodies of liquid on its surface. Yes, Titan has rivers, lakes, and seas which...
Posted on 30th May 2025
In the outer solar system, beyond all the planets, there’s a lot of stuff. Small rocky and icy objects orbit the sun at enormous distances. But strangely there’s a group of these objects that seem to be clustered together. Now, the use of the word 'clustered' might imply that these objects are close...
Posted on 30th May 2025
This is becoming increasingly regular for Starship. We know SpaceX takes a fail-fast, learn-fast approach, but this is the third launch in a row that's ended in rapid unscheduled disassembly. Elon was meant to talk to the press after the launch, but he disappeared instead. Only hours later did h...
Posted on 7th Mar 2025
Gilmour Space is about to launch its Eris rocket – this time for real! We have a date. The launch window opens March 15. Just to clarify, the delays have generally been out of their control. There have been quite a few regulatory hurdles to overcome, not least being that this is the first time th...
Posted on 7th Feb 2025
Psyche is the mission to the asteroid 16 Psyche – a piece of space rock that is supposedly worth $100k quadrillion. Or, depending which media report you read today, it might be a billion quadrillion dollars, or even a trillion quadrillion dollars. At this point these numbers don’t even mean anyth...
Posted on 11th Dec 2024
Nuke Mars. You’ve probably heard about this, or maybe you have the t-shirt. The idea is simple. Mars has a cold, thin atmosphere that doesn’t support liquid water on its surface. You might think this is a non-problem not looking for a solution, but there is a segment of society intent on moving to M...
Posted on 22nd Nov 2024
We recently heard that a Russian satellite called Luch-2 ("Luch" meaning ray in Russian) had a close approach with another satellite while in geostationary orbit. Geostationary orbits are inhabited by our navigation, communication, and meteorological satellites. The suspicion? That Luch-2 was ea...
Posted on 12th Apr 2024
The Boeing Starliner has a new launch date: May 1. If you were wondering – yes it has been delayed again. But now there's hope that it might finally go ahead. The two increasingly brave astronauts, Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, have named their spacecraft Calypso after Jacques Cousteau’s rese...
Being almost the holidays, this might be a good time to talk about space tourism. Let’s ignore the advertising of well-known rocket launch companies and...
The hybrid solar eclipse in Exmouth a couple of weeks ago was a pretty rare event, but to the surprise of no-one it was predicted...
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